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The London Underground turns 150 today!
It's probably the most
famous rail network in the world and much of that fame is due to
the iconic London Underground map. Millions of Londoners live with it imprinted on their brains
while tourists carry it away with them on T-shirts, mugs, tea towels and even
underwear.

But what makes this map so special? As far as geographical
accuracy is concerned, you could hardly find anything worse. The
distances between stations are distorted and so are the angles between
the pretty colour-coded lines. "If you
try to find your way around London on foot, the Underground map is
about as useful as a Monopoly board," says John D. Barrow, a
mathematician at the University of Cambridge. But it's exactly this
inaccuracy that makes the map so easy to use. And it also makes it
a work of design genius.

London Underground map from 1926. The outer reaches of the network are not part of the map.

The first maps of the London Underground were traditional
kinds of maps, showing you where the lines ran under London in accurate geographical
terms. "But this was horribly complicated," says Barrow. "Lots of stations [in
the centre of London] were jam-packed close together, lines didn't go
straight, and the outer
reaches were far away. The map was hugely extended in order to get
those far away places in and ridiculously crowded near the
centre."

"By the 1920s the management of the London Underground were getting
a little worried. People were not using the London Underground in the
way they had expected. Revenue was falling and commercial disaster was
a possibility. One of the reasons, it was suspected, was that people
regarded a trip on the London Underground as very complicated. The map
made the distances look enormous, changing lines looked
complicated."

This is what a geographically accurate map of the modern Underground would look like. Click here to see a larger image.

A draftsman who worked for the London Underground, called
Harry Beck, came up with an idea that saved the day. Beck ignored geography and instead focussed on the connections
between stations. He magnified the central regions and brought
in the far away ones. He laid the lines out to run either vertically, horizontally or at 45 degree
angles. He stretched and squeezed London's geographical map to make
the Underground network look good. And he also introduced the
colour-coding and the little circles that mark intersections of
lines.

The idea proved a huge success. "The sociology of London was
influenced in many ways by that map," says Barrow. "People were
prepared to live on the outer reaches of the Underground because the
map made you feel close to the centre." The map has
come to define the way many Londoners think about their home town. And many visitors never
even notice that they are looking at a distorted London.

Beck's background was in electronics and his idea
inspired by the neat lay-outs of circuit diagrams. But it wasn't entirely new. In
1736 the mathematician Leonhard Euler solved a famous problem that had
been making the rounds among intellectuals. The city of Königsberg (now
Kaliningrad) was divided by a river with the various bits of land
linked by seven bridges. The
problem was to find a tour around the city crossing
each bridge exactly once. Euler proved
that this was in fact impossible, using an argument that had nothing to do with the
actual geography of the city. It concentrated only on which land
components were linked to which.

Euler's proof is often considered the starting point of an
area of maths called topology. It ignores
features such as distances and angles and considers only how things are connected. In topology any two shapes that can be
deformed into each other by squeezing and stretching, but without
tearing, are regarded as being the same. It's an idea whose uses go way beyond the
world of maps. The shape of the Universe, the way DNA
folds and the many networks that criss-cross our lives, from social
networks to power grids, can all be understood using topological
techniques.

Beck's map and its modern descendants are examples of topological maps. The next time you see one, whether it's on
a rattling tube train or on a T-shirt, don't just think of London,
think of maths.

Further information

You can listen to John Barrow talking about the London Underground
map in our podcast
(starts after about 17 minutes).